Personal Property
by mosylu
Summary: Emily isn't sure how to say goodbye, even after she danced with him. She'll have to find a way, though.


(A/N) I wrote this after the season 7 finale and stuck in a metaphorical drawer, until I found it earlier and thought, "Hey, this isn't half-bad!" So here you go. The relationship can be romantic or platonic, whichever way you swing.

**Personal Property**

Emily Prentiss was pretty sure she wasn't drunk. A little buzzed, maybe. She'd drunk several glasses of Rossi's very good champagne, but slowly, over several hours. Reid would be able to make a fair estimation of her blood alcohol level from that.

She couldn't, and not just because she was buzzed. A little buzzed. Enough to make her feel soft and a little squishy around the edges. Tender. Like a turtle that had shucked its shell for some reason.

She found the deck of cards in Rossi's dining room, in a drawer. She stuck it in her bra - no pockets; feminine fashion tended to suck that way - and meandered back outside.

J.J. and Will were dancing again. They hadn't been far from each other all night. A few other couples were swaying on the floor. The party had thinned out. Jack and Henry had both crashed in one of Rossi's guest rooms, the remainder of which were tacitly offered to anyone who'd had too much champagne.

Reid was sitting at one of the tables, his eyes half-glazed over with thought. She stood watching him, wondering what had produced that look. The molecular structure and resultant weaknesses of ice sculptures? A catalog of the species of trees in Rossi's backyard? Maybe fourteenth-century love poetry.

He'd spent some time earlier talking to her about someone named Marjory Kempe, some kind of medieval mystic, who'd had to get permission from her husband to go out on pilgrimage because her body belonged to him and she couldn't take it away without his permission. When she'd gotten offended on Marjory's behalf, he'd fallen all over himself to explain.

"They belonged to each other," he said. "Her body was his, it was true, but conversely his body was hers. Society considered that, once married, they were each others' property."

She doubted that it had worked out quite that way in all situations, but it was a surprisingly romantic notion, especially for Dr. Reid.

Emily had never belonged to anybody but herself; never wanted to. But she wondered, as she watched her friends on the dance floor, what it would be like.

She dropped into the chair across from him. He looked up. She dug around in her bra - his eyebrows quirked - and produced the deck of cards, setting them in the middle of the table like a thrown gauntlet.

His mouth twisted up slightly. He looked around, found a bowl of M&Ms that had not been eaten right down to the glazing, and dumped it out.

"Stud?" he asked.

"Stud," she affirmed.

While she shuffled and dealt, he sorted the candy into two equal piles, long fingers flickering. He shoved one across the table to her. She nudged his little stack of cards closer to him.

She checked her cards. She looked at him. He was checking his cards, having watched her do the same.

She opened the pot with five M&Ms. He matched it, raised her three.

He said, "You're leaving, aren't you?"

She looked at him. He was looking at his pool of candies, arranging them by color. There was no anger in his motions, the set of his shoulders, the way he held his mouth. There wasn't anything. Perfect poker face.

"Why do you say that?"

"You danced with all of us. Even me, and I stepped on your foot at least three times. You made sure to."

"I made sure you'd step on my foot?"

"You made sure to dance with me, knowing that I would, because you taught me to dance."

And she'd thought she'd be crippled for life afterwards. But it had been so entertaining, watching him try to work out the patterns, the beat, and translate them from mind to body. He'd been dating Austin at the time, trying to impress her. Turned out she was a pretty sucky dancer too and it had really all been for nothing, except that Reid had read fourteen books on the history of couples dance and lamed Emily for a week. He'd been very apologetic.

"You remembered how pretty well."

"Eidetic memory."

"Yeah, I know."

"You still haven't answered me. But then I suppose you actually have."

She raised. He raised again.

"It's not about you," she said.

His fingers traced a pattern on the back of his cards. Very low: "I know."

Candies moved into the pot, scraping across the tablecloth.

"I don't fit anymore, Reid."

"With us?" His voice wavered.

"No." Her voice wavered too. "In - in my skin, I guess. I can't go back to the way things were. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I liked who I was, and I haven't always. I liked what I had, and I haven't always."

He lifted his eyes to hers. "You still have it, Emily."

She had to look away. "But it's not who I am."

He sighed.

Raise. Raise. Raise again.

"Doyle changed me," she said. "Seeing him again, and what he did to me, and what I had to do to you, all of you, that changed me again. You of all people should understand that."

"My personality changed after Georgia and Henkel because I became an addict."

"That wasn't the only thing. You know it wasn't."

It had cracked him open like an oyster. Taught him his own vulnerability. What she'd done to the team had taught her theirs. She could hurt them. She hated knowing that. If she tried to force herself into her old skin, something would crack and break and she would hurt them again. To have half a chance of keeping that connection between them whole, she had to shed that skin.

Fucking contradictions. She wondered, as she had ever since she came to understand that she couldn't stay, if it was just a handy excuse. I love you so I'm leaving.

She looked at her cards. "Call," she said.

"Interpol?" he asked, not laying out his cards just yet.

"Running the London office," she said.

"You accepted Easter's offer." It could have sounded sordid, put in those words, but his tone was matter-of-fact, not judgmental.

"I can do good things there."

_You can do good things here, too._ It hung in the air between them. But he didn't say it, and she was grateful. She had done good things with the team. It had reminded her that she could.

He laid his cards out on the table. "I'm going to write to you, Emily."

When she didn't reply, his mouth went tight. "It's not a _leash_."

She let out her breath. "No, I know." She flicked her thumb over the corner of her cards, even though she should be laying them down. "Letters?" She peered up at him, feeling her mouth curl up at one side. "With stamps?"

He nodded, mouth softening again.

"Can I email you back?"

He wrinkled his nose.

She put her cards down. "I won't be able to tell you everything," she said, suddenly serious. "The job I'll be doing - sometimes I may not be able to tell you anything."

"That's nothing new," he said.

She reared back slightly, feeling hurt. She'd thought he was over the passive-aggressive jabs.

He winced and bit his lip. "I'm sorry. I mean - " He let out his breath. "I don't care to know what you'll be doing for Interpol. Not at present, anyway. Just write about other things in your life. Your cat. Your new favorite food. Something that means I'm still a part of your life. That I still belong to you."

Her breath caught.

Friends could belong to each other too. Family as well. There were all kinds of ways you could be the property of another.

She looked away. "I'll write about the takeaway shop on the corner, and my crazy neighbor, and the crappy office coffee - "

"Maybe it'll be good. You never know."

"Please. London is not exactly known for its excellent coffee. Government offices, ditto. And you've been drinking law enforcement coffee for, what, seven years now?"

"Almost eight."

"Exactly. It'll be crappy coffee no matter how you slice it."

"If you have to slice it, then it's definitely crappy coffee."

"Awesome. After six years I have finally taught you how to make a joke."

"I make jokes," he said. "You just don't get them."

"Reid, nobody gets them."

"_I_ think they're funny."

She looked at him fondly.

He pulled their cards together, shuffled the deck. "Another hand?"

"Nah," she said, taking a fistful of the pot and stuffing it in her mouth.

"Hey, who won?" Morgan asked, ambling over, impossibly handsome in his tux. He glanced at Reid in concern, then at her. Possibly trying to gauge whether Reid knew yet, and how he'd taken it.

She shrugged. "Dunno."

Reid shrugged too, and stuffed the deck into his coat pocket. "Any champagne left?"

"Can you hold your champagne, pretty boy?"

"You're driving," Reid said, and flicked his fingers in a dismissal. Morgan snorted and went away.

Before they could get interrupted again, Emily said, "Spencer, I've got to say something now and I will deny the shit out of it when I'm fully sober again, so remember this."

He drew back slightly, as if shying away from something tender and vulnerable. She remembered the touch of his hands on her waist as he danced with her, like the motion of his thumb over knuckles on the plane after the Cyrus case, like his arms around her when she'd returned from Paris. "Emily - "

She spoke fast. "A part of me will always belong to you. No matter where I am, no matter where you are. There will always be a piece of me that's your property."

He looked distressed, although he'd been the one to say it first: that he belonged to her.

"Do I have your permission to take your property with me when I go?"

He swallowed.

She wondered what she would do if he said no. She wondered if Marjory Kempe's husband would have said no, or if that was even possible when someone you loved asked you a question like that.

"Yes," he said.

She sat back, throat suddenly thick. "Okay," she said. "Okay."

Morgan was coming back, champagne in one hand, the other steadying Penelope, who'd clearly had _plenty_ of champagne already. J.J. and Will had finally given up the floor and were drifting over, hands entwined. J.J. looked dazzled and a little baffled, as if she had to keep reminding herself that she'd gotten married today. Rossi had a fistful of clean flutes - god knew where he'd gotten those - and another bottle of champagne. Hotch was gently pulling Beth to her feet and toward them.

She wondered if, after the dances and the quiet moments she'd made sure to obtain with each one of them individually this night, whether her announcement tomorrow would be any surprise at all.

She looked at them, all these pieces of herself that she would leave behind, and thought, _But I'll be taking pieces of them with me too._

She knew then that she'd been wrong earlier. She did belong to people. And she wanted to.

FINIS


End file.
